(posted January 2012)

  Mary, Mother of Life

taken from Evangelium Vitae

The one who accepted "Life" in the name of all and for the sake of all was Mary, the Virgin Mother; she is thus most closely and personally associated with the Gospel of Life.  Mary's consent at the Annunciation and her motherhood stand at the very beginning of the mystery of life which Christ came to bestow on humanity.  Through her acceptance and loving care for the life of the Incarnate Word, human life has been rescued from condemnation to final and eternal death.

For this reason, Mary, "like the church of which she is the type, is a mother of all who are reborn to life.  She is in fact the mother of Life by which everyone lives, and when she brought it forth from herself she in some way brought to rebirth all those who were to live by that Life."

Mary helps the church to realized that life is always at the center of a great struggle between good and evil, between light an darkness.  It is precisely in the "flesh" of every person that Christ continues to reveal Himself and to enter into fellowship with us, so that rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really rejection of Christ.